I met up with my Dad and some other leaders from his ward. We went to the Wichita Mountains in Southwest Oklahoma. It was only 2 1/2 hours away from here and was a beautiful place. The purpose of this trip was to get the "Climb On Safely" Boy Scout certification. This is the Boy Scout's training program that is required for leaders to be able to take any of the Boy Scouts rock climbing or rapelling.
My Dad and I got there before anyone else and were able to scout out some great locations for us to do our course. We did some "classroom" training (safety requirements, procedures, etc) Friday night and then headed off the bed. At about 2 AM a cold front came in and brought some monster winds with it. We must have had 30-40mph gusts of winds the whole night with temperatures hovering right around freezing. It was a great way to test out my new backpacking sleeping bag.
By 7:30 Saturday morning, we were all packed up and ready to do some more training. We went to the visitor center to get out of the wind and do some instructional training. Our instructor was a cool guy who is in the Air Force and served in the same mission I did. We learned how to tie required knots, learn how and when to use them, and learned how to make harnesses out of rope or webbing if we need to. We then went off and did the "real world" training (aka have fun actually doing it).
I've been rapelling and rock climbing many times, but I still was able to learn something new. I learned how to do "Aussie" rapelling. Instead of going down backwards, you actually go down the cliff face first. It's quite exiharating, especially when you first start to hang out over the cliff. I also purposely got hung upside down so I could learn how to repell from that position.
At the end of it, I am really impressed with how safe it can be done, if done correctly. One of the basic rules is that there is never a single point of failure. You aren't ever trusting your life by a single rope, single knot, or single piece of equipment.
I'm slowly building up my own personal collection of gear so Laura and I can have some fun and go climbing on a weekend. I usually get one of those "do you REALLY need MORE camping equipment???" type looks when I buy something, but I don't think I'll get it with this because Laura seems pretty excited about it as well! Score one for me!
